


The Painting

by BrieflyMaximumPrincess



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, M/M, Soulmates, love through time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 15:23:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7646473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrieflyMaximumPrincess/pseuds/BrieflyMaximumPrincess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam fell in love with a painting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Painting

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my main language. I apologize for the numerous typos and mistakes you will find.

It was so weird to be here, searching in someone else’s belongings. It was like sorting his grandparents memories. We can keep the china, but the clothes have to go. His mother wanted to have this, but nobody wanted that… Even if Sam didn’t remember his grandparents very well, it was weird to be here with his mother, after his grandmother’s death, sorting what belonged to them once. His grandfather was long gone now and most of the objects belonged to his grandmother, his mom’s mother. She looked sad but more like nostalgic.

They had already done most of the work. They were in the attics now. The selection was easier, most of the things here hadn’t been used for decades and were waiting under the dust to be put in the trash. Sam lifted a sheet and his eyes locked with the icy blue ones. The memories rushed to him. For so long he could remember, this pair of eyes have always obsessed him. He remembered seeing them but it was so long ago he forgot where exactly. He had finally convinced himself he dreamed them. But he could never forget them. In a sort, they have been part of him all his life. Sam felt so happy to finally found where they came from. It was like he dived in a pool of warm feelings, like a weight have been lifted of his chest. He called his mother, excitement in his voice.

“Mom, look what I found"  
"Oh, that old painting. You remember that?"  
"Yes and no. I knew I had seen those eyes somewhere, but I thought I dreamed them. It’s been years that I have them in a corner of my mind without being able to pinpoint where they come from."  
"I would never say you could have remembered it. You were so young. This painting was hung in my grandparents living-room. You were just four or five years old when they died. My mother kept it but she never displayed it in her house. She thought the man in it had something creepy."  
"Why, he looks kinda good, I would say.”

The painting represented a middle aged man, dirty blond, with elegant clothes. His eyes were vivid blue and he seemed to see through the painting directly at people. All the composition was in shades of warm brown and black, except the eyes, piercing icy blue.

“Yes, I thought too when I was younger. But now I’m not so sure anymore. Don’t you think it has something a little sad? When I was a little girl, I remember saying my grandmother, if I ever had boys, I wanted them to have the same eyes."  
"Failed.” Sam chuckled  
“My grandfather always replied, only his eyes were good to keep in the man."  
"Who was he?"  
"My grandfather’s brother I think. Maybe there is a name or something behind it."  
"Not behind. There is a name just under the frame. We can see the top of the letters in the right corner.” Sam remembered.  
“I forgot you used to stare at it for hours when we visited the my grandparents. You were just a little boy. Dean used to say you were in love and it annoyed my grandfather so much."  
"Why? I was just a little boy."  
"You know, he was already a very old man. He never wanted to speak about the family."  
"It’s a shame. I would enjoy to know more about the man in the painting."  
"Once, I asked my grandmother about him. She said her brother in law was a very romantic man, and pretty. Women always followed him around wherever he went. And he was rich. She said he was a very handsome man until…"  
"Until what ?” Sam asked intrigued.  
“I don’t know. She never told me the rest. You know, maybe she just invented it for me as a story because I liked the painting, like you. Maybe she didn’t even know him.”

Sam asked to keep the painting. Of course, his mother agreed. She thought it was funny how Sam was fascinated by it when he was younger, and now that he found it after so many years. Sam hung it in his living room at first. But it didn’t fit very well with the rest of his fournitures. He hung it in his kitchen and in the his entrance. But it didn’t fit either. Sam tried different spots in his house, but it felt always wrong. He finally hung it in his bedroom, just in front of his bed, and it felt right here. Every night, Sam fell asleep under the blue eyes watch. It felt warm and comfortable having him here.

Sam began to dream of him again. Not only the eyes, but the whole man. It was frequent he met him in dreams. The man always smiled. He pronounced Sam’s name with so much joy, like nothing could be more pleasant.

Sam hesitated to take off the painting from the frame. He was afraid of damaging it. But he was curious about the name of the man. “Lucifer Campbell”. For a moment, that was enough and Sam felt at peace with this information. He had finally a name to put on those eyes.

But step by step, Sam felt the need to know more about him. Maybe it was because he watched him every day a little more. Maybe because sometimes he saw the sadness, his mother told him about. Maybe because the dreams were an every night thing now. Maybe because he started to speak to the painting like he could answer him.

Sam searched the library and the archives, because he couldn’t find a clue in his family anymore. He dug that Lucifer Campbell was in fact a popular man, but he never married anyone. He was an architect, good enough to become rich. His property and his money were shared between his brothers when he died. What he did at the age of fifty-three years old. Sam thought it was not so long after the painting was made. And he died in Saint Trinity Hospital.

At first, Sam believed it was because of a disease, but he found out that it was a psychiatric hospital. Somehow, Sam felt betrayed.This evening, he wondered if he shouldn’t take the painting out off his wall. He realized he acted like the man on it was a friend. He spoke to him, told him about his day, his hopes for the future. But he (and he should stop to think about it as a “he”, because it was a “it”) was not a friend. Just a painting of a man deceased ages ago, before Sam’s birth. How could he be obsessed over him -it- since his childhood? It wasn’t healthy. Sam couldn’t have real feelings for an image. He had to stop thinking about him all the time. He had to go out on dates again instead of spending his evenings discussing with a man he never met.

But that night, Lucifer put distress in his calls. He didn’t smile to Sam. His eyes reflected pain and betrayal.

When he woke up, Sam had no more intention to take the painting off the wall.

So Sam continued his researches. He found out that Saint Trinity Hospital gave all sort of objects to a museum specialized in medicine. Sam took an appointment to meet the director. He showed him a picture of the painting and said he was researching for his family tree. The director assured him he would contact him if he found anything. Sam hadn’t very much hope.

He found out that Lucifer was cremated in Saint Trinity Hospital. No body left to pay his respects to. Being in a mental institution was a shame. The man didn’t deserve a burial. Sam felt sad for Lucifer.

To his surprise, the museum director contacted him. He gave Sam a little notebook. It was Lucifer’s. It was filled with an elegant handwriting, Sam liked immediately. He rushed to his house and started reading. It could feel Lucifer’s presence by his side, and hear his voice in his head as he read. The man was everything like Sam imagined him. But the astonishing part was what Sam found in the notebook. Lucifer’s story.

In those pages, Sam learned how Lucifer fell slowly in insanity. At first because, unlike other men, he wasn’t attracted to women. Nobody could know. Not in this age. It had to stay a secret. But what brought him to a mental institute was when he couldn’t keep further long for himself that he had visions of somebody. A young man he never met. Lucifer described him as the most beautiful person he ever saw. Long brown hair, eyes that seemed to change colors everyday, dimples on his cheeks when he smiled, kindness all over his face and a smile warmer than the sun. There was a drawing of Sam’s face in the notebook that made him wonder if someone wasn’t playing a crual joke on him. But he had spoke of the notebook to no one. Even his family wasn’t aware of his researches. So it couldn’t be a joke.

Lucifer confessed in this pages, he had fallen in love with the man he saw in dreams. He knew he wasn’t real. He knew they will never met. But he had visions so vivid of him, it didn't matter. His brother finally asked for him to be detained in hospital because he kept talking about him. The doctors gave him all sort of drugs that knocked him out, but he didn’t care because every time he closed his eyes he could see the man he was in love with.

When he finished reading the notebook, Sam wondered if he believed in soulmates. Because he had the strange feeling his soulmate died too early, when he wasn’t even born yet. His soulmate died three generations before him and he will never meet him in this life. Maybe in the next? Who knows?

But a fact was sure : all the notes in Lucifer’s book were addressed to “my dear Sam”.


End file.
